Juri Ammari was originally only looking to improve his Arabic. He was working at a relief organization for Syrian refugees in Berlin when he heard about the Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East (ISME) degree program at Freie Universität Berlin.

The new master’s program specializing in the Middle East sounded highly interesting: Ammari was raised in an intercultural household with his Lithuanian mother and Arab father. He sent in his application and was among the first group to be admitted to the degree program when it began in 2020.

Different Perspectives and a Broader View

“It was a formative and extremely helpful experience for me, both on a personal level and for my career,” he remembers. “My view of the Middle East started out with an ethnocentric, Arab pride – and broadened considerably through the course.” Ammari says that his fellow students played a major role in this. He heard completely different points of view from students with Jewish, Kurdish, Persian, and many other backgrounds.

The students are just as diverse as the Middle East itself, with all countries in the region represented – from Afghanistan to Qatar. Just a handful of them completed their bachelor’s degree in Germany; almost 90 percent of ISME students obtained their first degrees outside Europe, with many having previously studied in Turkey.

Sometimes it can help to take a step back before approaching an issue, and students in the ISME degree program experience that first hand. They study aspects of the Middle East that extend far beyond the region itself. Core classes are not held in region-specific languages, but in English. The degree program does not rely on one academic discipline as a reference point, but instead addresses topics that focus on individual Middle Eastern cultures, their languages, and history, including Arabic studies, Iranian studies, Kurdish language and literature, Islamic studies, Semitic studies, Jewish studies, Turcology, and Ottoman studies. All this is intended to attract the most diverse target group possible to the program.

Victoria Mummelthei from the Seminar for Arabic Studies and Semitic Studies was surprised by how well this approach works. She coordinates the degree program alongside Lukas Mühlethaler from the Institute for Jewish Studies. “In this program students meet people who they would otherwise not come into contact with,” says Mummelthei, who holds a doctorate in Arabic studies.

Students pick this program for a wide range of reasons. “Everyone has a story to tell,” says Lukas Mühlethaler. While some are working toward the goal of pursuing a doctoral degree, others want to become experts on the region for a future job. Many students are not motivated by career prospects, but instead by a personal interest to obtain a clear picture of the Middle East. “Students also find their fellow students interesting,” remarks the professor of Jewish studies.

Discovering Connections

The curriculum allows students to follow their interests and make new connections along the way. While ISME students study together in the interdisciplinary core area of the degree program, they have the opportunity to specialize by selecting electives based on their research interests. These electives are run by individual disciplines and are a unique feature of Freie Universität that make the university an attractive place to study, says Lukas Mühlethaler. Until now, these courses were only open to students on the corresponding master’s program for the specific field. Now that ISME students are also able to attend these courses, the academic debates taking place are being enriched with new perspectives.

Students can choose modules outside the department, even at other universities. “They find connections and visit courses that we hadn’t even thought of,” says Mummelthei. Polina Shablovskaia is one student who has made use of this freedom. She studied Middle Eastern history and linguistics in Saint Petersburg before applying for the ISME program in Berlin. As a mother of two, flexibility is particularly important for her. She describes her university studies as being like a jigsaw puzzle: “You can fit different parts together to form a whole picture.”

Like other ISME students, Shablovskaia was a member of an X-Student Research Group. This is a junior research group set up by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) – the association of major Berlin institutions of higher education formed as part of the German federal and state governments’ Excellence Strategy.

For two semesters, Shablovskaia studied the anthropology collection at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and discovered new connections to and between the exhibits. Together with a fellow student from Humboldt Universität, she created a digital map that she was able to put on display at the Humboldt Forum. Her narrative piece on the subject has been published in the Etnofoor anthropology journal. She will also be speaking about it at a conference in London this summer. She found the project very inspiring. “It showed me how collaboration in a research team works in practice,” says Shablovskaia, who is already making plans for her doctorate.

Dealing with Ambiguities

Mummelthei and Mühlethaler both believe that the renewed flare-up of the Middle Eastern conflict following the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza have made ISME students aware of just how present this part of history is. The current conflict has been addressed in depth in seminars. The tone did become quite emotional in WhatsApp groups, according to Ammari. However, some clarifying talks were able to smooth the waters again.

“In the chats, many were saying that we, being on such an interdisciplinary master’s course, should be able to discuss this topic in a good way,” says Ammari. “It was great to hear this from people who didn’t necessarily have the same political viewpoint.” Mühlethaler noted that the students did not stop listening to each other. “Because they knew that they got along very well with the others on a personal level, they did not let the conflict put an end to the debate.”

Together with Mummelthei, Mühlethaler published a statement in November calling on students to maintain a respectful dialogue. “It is very important for us to adopt a clear stance on diversity, open discussion, and academic freedom,” explains Mühlethaler – especially as many students had chosen to study in the ISME degree program because they were unable or did not want to do a similar program in one of the many countries under authoritarian rule in the region.

There are never simple truths in relation to the Middle East: “There’s no black and white. It is in no way simple, nor can it be simplified,” says Mummelthei. It is not the aim of ISME to whitewash political conflicts or any dispute between different disciplines. Mühlethaler stresses that tension is part and parcel of this field of study – another thing that the students learn first-hand. “If you want to study the Middle East, you will have to deal with ambiguities.”

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This article originally appeared in German in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.